Advent=Reboot me

This is the beginning of Advent.  So what does Advent mean?

According to the dictionary it means coming, arrival of an important person, event or thing.

La llegada de una persona notable, cosa or evento.

Why did the people in the time of Christ need Him?  Why do we need Christ?

The world had fallen into darkness – the only thing left was rules and laws…there was no Spirit, no more hope, no more Love…only rules.

Isaiah says we don’t understand who God is or why He does the things he does. BUT WE KNOW that we can trust that if we get on the wrong course, God is the One to whom we must turn to straighten our path, to get us back on the right path.

Advent is like a reset – What happens when my computer locks up?  I kick it/throw it across the room, I get mad…and then finally I simply restart it… I hit the reset button.

Advent for the Jewish world in Jesus’ time was the start, I mean it was the beginning of a brand new world order.  It was the beginning of a new Kingdom…God was hitting the reset button and setting things right once and for all with the coming of Christ. 

God was saying “the Kingdom of God is coming to Earth – You’ve missed it all these years, you’re off course and I’m here to set it back on course…to point you in the right direction again…

This is NOT Jesus just coming here and fixing everything – This isn’t heaven on earth in an instant, all sunshine and lollypops…this is a rescue for us.  Like a rescue from a desert island.  When you get rescued, you aren’t home yet…you still have a journey to get to where you are going.  But thank God, you are on the rescue ship.

Advent for us is like the ship coming by the island.  Finally we can get back to the start of the journey…and what journey are we on?  We are on our journey to the Kingdom of God.  But not a Kingdom in some far away land…a Kingdom that is on our earth that starts with a change in our hearts and grows out of who God makes us to be.  It always starts within us…with us.

If you are like me, you started here last year.  Advent was a time to remember again why we do what we do.  It was a time to wake up and realize that the priorities that were so clear at Christ’s birth in Advent 2010 and Christmas 2010 are now so far and distant from where we wanted our lives to be NOW in 2011.  It’s time for us to reboot.

In the time of Christ…33, 34, 35 AD it must have been so clear to the followers of Christ that they were in the midst of a big change.  It was even clear to the religious leaders of the day…the Pharisees and Sadducees and even to the Romans because they all worked so hard to fight against the change that Jesus was calling for. 

Even now, our own hearts cry out NO NO…No more change.  STOP…I don’t want to give up my life as it is.  I don’t what to put God first.  I don’t want to give up control…not matter if I feel in control or not…I can’t trust God.  I can’t really give myself over to Christ and HIS ways.

BUT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT ADVENT IS ALL ABOUT. 

Mark says it so well at the beginning of his gospel:

“The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God…”  The beginning…in other words, this is where it all starts…it starts by us recognizing that a change is coming.  But we can’t just recognize that Jesus is coming and that is it…we are called to more…We are called to begin a journey with Christ…and that journey starts back at the beginning…when Christ first comes to earth to show us His love and how we need to live like Him…

Mark goes on in the gospel to say… “I will send a messenger ahead of you a voice calling, ‘prepare the way for the Lord, make straight the paths for Him!’”

But what paths is Mark talking about?  The paths Mark are talking about are here…right here in our hearts.  We aren’t preparing the world, or even our neighborhood, or our cities, or our friends…we are preparing ourselves…we are asked by God to open the door to Him to give over to HIM our will and to FOLLOW Him.  No matter the plans and the inventions of our minds, If Christ’s love, Christ’s presence, TRUE LOVE has not overcome our hearts, then our path is not straight and our journey is NOT on the right path.

Return to Him this ADVENT…this season of beginning and YOU begin again your life.  Encounter God again…let Him make your path straight…ask Him to reboot to life and to come into your life so that Advent will truly be a new beginning, the coming of our Saviour, the start of a new way of LIFE.

Saving the world

I have this idea that all of our lives we are responding to our calling by either running away from it or running towards it.  I think that we are really doing both at the same time in different areas of our lives.  God has called us to something that involves saving the world.  Maybe not saving the entire world through one person, but collectively being a part of the saving Kingdom that does save the world.  Their are casualties though.  There are the hurt, the hungry, the poor.  There are the victims of crimes, bad parents, and abuse.  There are the victims of our own racism and classicism and nationalism that cause us to think for some moments that God must be asleep at the wheel.  In these moments when I see these things, this evidence of our collective fallen-ness, I wonder where God is.

I think that God is in me, working to bring His kingdom of peace and love and redemption and sharing and hope through me.  I want to believe it, and I want to know it.  But most of all I want to see it.  I really wish I could see it every day through the institutions that we say belong to God...places like churches and even places like hospitals and corporations with God's name on them, or in their mission statements.

I don't think that God's work is confined to those very infinite and small places.  I think that His work and His movement and His power is at work in all the people of this world.  I think that His hands are at work inside of each and every human being, because we all know and contemplate and suspect that there is something more to this life than the reality in front of us.  There are more than the atoms that make up our existence.  There is an awareness of the other, the more, the incredible that is both in us and through us and bigger than the collective US.  Thank God, there is more than just us.  There is the God in us.  I don't know what redemption and resurrection always looks like, but I know it when I see it, when I see one of us doing something wonderful for someone else.  Expand all these moments throughout all of creation, and you will start to see something more wonderful and more incredible that you can imagine.  Realize that these moments are taking place all across the world and in some way are connected and caused by the same wonderful force.  You will start to see the Other.  You will start to see God.  And this is only a start.

Slavery is not Modern But...

Slavery is not a modern concept, but it still exists.  A friend of mine is in jail right now because he is subjected to the whims of a person who can take advantage of his undocumented status.  In fact, he is trying to adjust status, but does not have the same rights as I do.  I only have the rights I do because I was lucky to have been born at an address in this country.  It's not just that one person can be controlled/blackmailed by another because of something like this.

Nothing is cut and dry when it comes to immigration, but blackmail is cut and dry...it is not right.  It's not right to manipulate another person because of the weaknesses they endure due to their color, religion, or status.  In this case two out of three are bad...bad wrong.  We may have all been created equally...but from that first breath, the inequality begins...  "I am so sorry..."

I don't like being blind.

I don't think I can accept "blind faith" I don't think it is really faith at all to be act like I am blind. The world is hard to accept along side of the professions of faith that I try to live out... My faith is also hard to accept along side of what I see in my world every day too. Just because it's hard, doesn't mean I should just give myself a lobotomy when it comes to faith. I think it means that I need to think harder, pray more, and accept that becoming more uncomfortable with my world and with my faith is not a bad thing. Rather it is something that makes my life and my faith deeper and richer. A good scotch was not made over night...

911

no more words about this day...

Loss is a fact of life

September is a month of loss.  We lost a lot of things on 9-11.  This month is the month I lost my Mom and found out about the loss of a close friend.  It's the month that so many things went away from me and away from our physical world that it makes me question the eternal...the other.

Pain is like that.  It makes me think only of what is in front of me and focuses me on the pain and away from the reality of the "other."  But the "other" is so much bigger than the pain, and even much more real.  It's part of being a reluctant believer that makes believing in the "other" so hard sometimes.  We are all reluctant to believe when the pain and the sadness start to take over.  But holding on to the "other" is the only thing that really allows the pain to heal us and make us something more than we were before.

If we don't grow, then only bitterness and hatefulness and soreness remain.  But if we grow beyond the pain, then we point the way to the "other" that all of us so desperately need.  That other, of course, is love.

art is life.

art is life...life is art. there is not such thing as imitation. you are living it as you go creating a blob, a masterpiece, a great triumph or a terrible tragedy. you really don't know what art is if you don't think that you are making it each and every day. your words form ideas and concepts and stories. your life continues the weaving of a tapestry whose threads bind together actions, interactions, relationships, and pull and tug upon the fabrics of other's lives. they are all jumbled up together, not in a mess, but in a unique 3 dimensional piece that has so complicated a shape/organic and changing each nano-second. what is that but beauty...art. life is art.

like the wind...

There is supposed to be some mysterious quality about the lives of Christians. I don't mean that we look weird because we go to the same places on Sundays or that we don't live what we preach... I mean that when people look at our lives, they should be asking themselves..."just why do they do that?" "Why do they give up their money like it's nothing?; Why do they hang out with such an eclectic group?; Why do they not fit in to one political ideology or another like the rest of the world?; Why do those people give their time away to vagrants, losers, outcasts, and _________ (you fill in your blanks)."

We should not only look different in our ways, but we shouldn't be conformed to one "human" definition or another of what this world says a Christian should be. We should be so moved by God that we begin to take on God's quality of mystery. What we do, how we live, what we support and who we hang out with should always be influenced by God's Spirit moving within us. And who can know God's Spirit so as to understand it. It is like the wind. We know now where it came from or where it is going...but we feel its presence, and it moves us.

Alabama...land of the incarcerated

Representative Hammond of Decator has been quoted as saying of the bill:

''We're trying not to be punitive and mean, but we do want to accomplish our mission,'' Hammon said. ''We want to discourage illegal immigrants from coming to Alabama and prevent those that are already here from putting down roots.''

This is not such a simple issue. The roots have already been established...some for generations. This is a human rights issue as well as an economic one. The human rights issue is that these persons have bought homes, fill apartment complexes and opened legitimate businesses in Alabama. They have children that are born here and some that have grown up here for many years. These children, both undocumented and citizens know no other culture than that of Alabama.

The economic issue has brought together some strange bed-fellows like business groups and human rights organizations. Both recognize that not allowing families to rent apartments, get license plates for their cars, or even ride the bus to school would not only be punitive, it would be "mean" and "hateful." It would destroy some local economies. The same people who celebrate Latino culture one day and eat their tacos and tamales are ready to throw Latino families out of their apartments and trailers and deny them any legal way to simply exist within the borders of Alabama. This behavior is deplorable. To paraphrase Debs, if one man's very existence is "illegal" then I too am illegal. I will stand with you, fight with you, and give you refuge under my roof.

words are just more "poop" but yu know what I mean.

I don't know how to give spiritual context to what I am feeling right now. I don't know how to give emotional context to what I am feeling right now. I don't even really know what to do.

"poop" is a word that we assign to stuff that we have in abundance, that we don't know what to do with, that our lives kind of accidentally step in and get caught up in. So that's what I have now...a bunch of words that just mean shit.

sometimes you just want to throw up

I just want to throw up...I ate a bad meal and it doesn't sit well with me. Sometimes I eat some bad stuff, I hear bad stuff, I see bad stuff, and I can't fix it, heal it, or change it. It just sits there and makes me feel so very sick. We need healing...we need a doctor that can patch things up without all the killing, the shooting, the torturing. We accept dictators because they bring stability...but stability at the price of freedom and lives. We accept revolution as long as it brings to power people that don't hurt anyone beyond their own borders. Containment isn't a policy that I can accept. But how can we fight against tyrants without violence, guns, and bombs? We say that is the only language they understand. Maybe it's the only language we understand. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. God please show me how that works.

Truth in Numbers

There is truth in all kinds of things. Today, I see truth in numbers. They do not lie, they only exist. They are what they are, and they are only moved around and changed by those of us who would use them. We use them to assign value, to count how many or how few. We use them to grade each other. While numbers don't feel or care about which number they are, we crave certain numbers, certain scores, certain thresholds. Salaries, bank accounts, zip codes, ACT scores, IQ scores, and net worth. Numbers are things that we think are so very important to us. But to them, they are just what they are. And so are we.

Happy Love Day

So what about the flowers and the gifts and the cards. What I care about are the relationships that they celebrate. If the relationship isn't there, then all the gifts in the world are just dust reconfigured that will go back to dust in the end. The eternal thing is the Love that is shared between us. It is this gift that keeps on giving, causing both pain and heartache as I open myself up ever more to its power to change me. and break me down.

In the end I am nothing, and Love is everything...

I love you Love.

Some times I wish that I could just go to the doctor and get them to tell me what it is that is wrong with me. I wish that there were some diagnosis, some disease, some problem that they could name and tell me, so that I would know why I don’t have a life that is perfect, why I do stupid things some times, why I some times don’t meet every one's expectations or why I let people down, or why I hurt people’s feelings. Some days I just wish there were something that would explain why some people like me and some people don’t...and I wish that there were some magic pill that I could take that would realign that part of me that is broken and put it all back into place so that I would never let you down, and never hurt your feelings, and never get upset and angry, and never ever would get hurt myself. I mean, I can’t control what other people do, but oh how I wish I really wouldn’t care what people say, or what they think about me. Oh how I wish the only thing I cared about was the thing that God cares about...and once I got to be that perfect little spiritual person...well rounded in all areas of my life...balanced, enlightened, peaceful, and full of love... God how I pray for that pill to be invented so that I can just get there...don’t you?

But life isn’t perfect and neither are we. We don’t live in a world where perfection is even a possibility. Our bodies and our minds and our emotions may have been created by God...but somewhere long before you and I came along, the train left the track and the path to enlightenment became...well...broken, fallen, caved in, impassible. Truly, any attempt on our part to reach perfection, Nirvana, wholeness, whatever...any attempt at that will most predictably fall short, because there is not a way that we can get there with the minds, the souls, the hearts, the emotions that we have been born with. It is really only by some other way that we can even see and believe that we are falling a bit short of the ideal. Somewhere deep inside ourselves if we just gave into our impulses, followed our own way, ceased to live by any law that was not governed by our own ferocious appetites, that we would consume everything and everyone that came across our path. In fact, we know that somewhere on our road to fulfillment we know that if we only thought of ourselves and what we wanted and thought that we needed without any regard to any one else...we know that living like that would most certainly lead to such a melt down that we would be consumed, eaten up...melt down Chernobyl style...there would be nothing left of us or our souls and we would be even more empty and malnourished that the day we started our journey to fulfillment.

So what is it...what is out there that truly leads us? What is it that is out there and why do we need it? Why do we know somehow...deep within ourselves that God is somehow behind this world and its rules and its systems and the deep deep deep connections that bind us...each of us...one to another. How do we know this in the midst of a world that is...most obviously....broken? We know this, I believe, because in the midst of a broken and fallen world, God has been calling out to us from the deep. I don’t mean that we hop in the submarine like Jules Verne and go searching for God...I mean He is calling out to us from that place that exists within us so deep and so far down, that it isn’t really something that one could say is a part of this world. It is that place that is so deep within us that it is still untouched by this world...it is other world...it is God world...it is spiritual world...it is the uncorrupted...or maybe somewhat corrupted (God please forgive all the ellipses, but how to say this without them)...BUT nonetheless it is more God and Good (capital G...whatever that means) than fallen. Ok...it is more like what God intended than anything else that makes up the Who of who we are.

But it sits within this human shell of a body. And, it sometimes whispers, sometimes screams at us to tell us that the way we are going, the things we are saying, and sometimes doing and even thinking...these things are not what God intended. They maybe close...real close, but we still have a lot of work to do to get back to the intended use of our thoughts, our actions, our connections, our relationships, our communities, our ministries, our lives and the connections that make up this entire thing we call LIFE on earth. Yes, what I am saying may be so scientifically unprovable, but doesn’t it feel right? Is love something we can see, smell, and look at under a microscope? Is it nonetheless true? Real? Present? Even a driving force that binds not just couples, but families, communities, cities, nations, and perhaps the human race as a whole?

And where does this love come from? Where does the example of the perfect Love come from? We know that none of us match up to this unseen standard, so where does the standard reside? Who created it if not the Creator? Who put the standards in our hearts/heads/beings if not the Creator who is Love itself? And if we have this part of the Creator within us...like some sci-fi movie...that part of ourselves that isn’t really a part of this fallen world and our fallen-ness...this part of us is crying out to connect with the other parts of the Creator that are in you and me and Joe and Jesus and Chen and Jayesh and Pierre and Hanz. In fact that part of us isn’t just trying to connect to them, but it is screaming at us to try and reconnect us to our Creator Himself. And it is desperately trying to make not only these connections real and present in our lives, but it is trying to work its way through the more fallen parts of our bodies and our lives and our broken systems and broken value systems and political systems and it is so desperately trying to change them from the inside out. Like a virus or an infection it is trying to change us and change this world at a molecular level...metaphorically speaking, of course...so that even the assumptions that we never question, we start to questions, we start to challenge and think about and compare to the example of Love that we saw in Christ, that we feel in our beings, and to throw out these assumptions that don’t match up and become so un-like the fallen-ness that is all around us and so much more like the perfect-ness that is our Creator.

But perfectness does not mean right-ness or correct-ness. Perfect-ness means love. It means true Love in all things, in all responses, in all relationships, in all encounters, in all communities, in all nations, in all interactions between all people and races...It means that we must get to know what true love means by getting to know Who true love is. It is already a living and breathing part of who we are...it has just become subdued by the corrupted portions of who we are. God has not changed, Love has not changed, rather we have simply fallen away from what we have been made to be. This entire existence that we have is all about getting back TOWARDS the Loveliness that was intended to be the result of all our efforts and AWAY from the selfishness that began our fall away from the Loveliness to begin with.

I will never be there completely until, at some point, through some miracle transformation, I am rescued, transformed, changed in some eternal way. But Love/God is with me, with you, with US as individuals, as couples, as families, as nations, as churches, as humans...and He will never ever go away. May that part of us that is Love, that was forever created to be Love and share Love and give Love praise Him and infect us so that we may every day become more like Him and less like the fallenness that causes us to question His true Love for us.

the Lady

Aung San Suu Kyi is described by a Newsweek writer as "float[ing] like some otherworldly presence, calm and cool as others are flushed and frenetic."





This is a woman who must have a sense of urgency since she was released after years of house arrest. She must know that she might have to return to that prison at any time the "generals" get tired of her freedom. Still...this peace and seeming calm in the midst of a storm points to a serenity and calm that must come from a sense of purpose and a trust in things greater than oneself.





She is quoted later as saying "My very top priority is for people to understand that they have the power to change things themselves." What a very healthy point to remember for someone who is used to leading others. My own trap is to think my advocacy work is so dependent upon my own efforts for its success. In other words, I struggle not only to do the right thing...but I also struggle to maintain control of the outcomes. Suu Kyi, in this little slice of her life, is portrayed as both having the confidence of one who is doing all she can do...and then leaving the outcomes to be whatever they may be. In my mind, that is truly freedom.





I want that freedom. I want to be free from expectations of outcomes and letting those expectations rule my emotions, my esteem, my image of myself. I simply want to be and to do what I feel called to do...not without consequence, but without a specific expectation that will define "good" and "bad" or "right outcome" and "wrong outcome" when such outcomes are truly out of my control. Suu Kyi must know how long she has fought and what little ground has been given politically by the generals in her land. She must know that by some measures her work has accomplished so little in tangible results. But, deep down she must know that the fight both the means and the end. And so it is with us. All of us on this earth. The apostle Paul said it like this...we are running a race. Let us run it as best we can. We are not running it to beat anyone else or in competition with anyone...we are running it to run it because it is what we are called to do. To loose the race is to quit it. To win it is simply to continue to run it...and by running it we are neither in control of the outcome or Lord over our destiny...we are simply on the way and at arrived at the right destination all at the same time. The means has become the end has become the means...and on and on.

climbing out of an abyss

Depression sneaks up on you. At times, I feel like I fall into an abyss, like I run up onto a sink hole in the middle of the road at 80 miles per hour with no time to make a correction. Suddenly you find yourself into something...sinking deeper and deeper. Panic takes over, your mind knows it wants to think...you try to stop the panic and the fear. You want the reason and the logic to bring you back to what you know you believe. You try like hell to remember the faith that guides you and the Love that you so strongly believe in...and yet like a stun gun...the fear and anxiety paralyzes you and keeps you from struggling or even thinking. It's like it brings you to the point where you cannot move...it's a mental paralysis of the will. Confidence seeps out of you like blood from a wound. And with it flows the energy and the peace that is the foundation of a sane life. It's like sanity becomes illusive and out of reach. You don't know where you are relative to where you were when you could think and act and not quake in fear. It's like being in a prison. there are no locks on the doors, but you still can't leave. What is happening?
Why does this brain operate this way? There's got to be a drug, a therapy, an exercise, something that brings us back to reality...I'm not talking about a reality that is based upon the smoke and mirrors of this world's values... I'm talking about the reality of truth that surpasses the made up value systems our society has concocted.

Most of all, I just want to escape the overwhelming fear and anxiety that can grip me and drag me under. No longer can I believe that there is no power in the forces of our mind that bring us into depressive states. But I must know what can be done to bring me out of this and to escape the undertow that seems unrelenting in its pull. There has to be hope in a salvation from this way and this path. There is hope. Escape of the grip of this horrible power. I preach that God can do all these things. It just isn't obvious to me how His salvation comes in the midst of these horrible places.

When tragedy strikes

It is like no other thing in life to me. Tragedy just strikes. It is like a blow from a fist that you did not see coming. At first, you are stunned. You know something just happened. You know you didn't see it coming. You're trying to process it. What just happened? Then the pain starts. Ouch...that really hurts...no, that REALLY hurts. There's nothing you could have done to prevent it, there's no time for regrets. There's just that pain.

That's what death of a friend is like. That's what death is like at all when you are experiencing it as one who is left behind.

On Friday morning Angel Cuevas Hernandez passed away from us. We can no longer touch the soul that was his, we can no longer make him laugh, or wonder what will Angel do next. We just know that he has drifted away...quietly and almost peacefully.

But it still hits the rest of us like a punch in the face. I love you Angel...I miss you Angel. I feel so much pain at your passing.

Jesus didn't get the memo...

Jesus once said, "Do you think I have come to bring peace on this earth?" Well, duh...of course. unless this is a trick question...as most of them are. I'm going to say, yes. Yes, you did come to bring peace on the earth. All that beating spears into plowshares, loving your neighbor, good Samaritan stuff... Did Jesus not get the memo?

"No, I have come to bring division." Ahh crap...it was a trick question.

I read this and I am confused. Aren't you? After all what is the point of the message of reconciliation to God through Christ? What is the message of love that Jesus brought. Didn't all the miracles, all the healings, all of the stuff about seeing the father by seeing him...didn't all that intend to bring about the "kingdom on earth?" And isn't the kingdom on earth all green pastures, country songs, and lemonade on a warm afternoon? Peace, right?

It seems like it should be so, but just for one moment, try to step out and respond to what you think is the voice of God. For just one moment try to stand up and say...I think God is calling me to do ____________. Now, the crap starts flying...trust me. Following the way of Christ inevitably puts us in contradiction to 99.9% of the rest of the world. But it doesn't entitle us to scream at the world, to belittle the world, or to shove our ideas down the throats of the world. Our calling is to simply walk down the new path and follow the way of Christ. Sometimes, this quiet and humble way can put us in the way of of some pretty powerful forces. Sometimes, our path takes us into on-coming traffic. At that point, there is division...there is conflict...there is not "peace" in the external, feel good, not going to bother no-body kind of way. In fact, sometimes just following the path puts us in a place of such contradiction that others might feel threatened, judged, and alienated by us. I'm not saying we intend to do those things...but it happens.

Example...an entire wealthy family in the Atlanta area decides that they have too much, their lifestyle is too wasteful, they have to make a change. They don't ask anyone else to do it. They don't say the world of McMansions and car payments, and credit cards, and perpetual shopping sprees is bad...they just say, "we're going to try another way." They decided cut all their expenses in half and use the savings to do some really stupid things. Things like put wells in remote villages in Africa, build schools, and teach people how to make things that will lift their families out of poverty.

They didn't go around to their neighbors, family, and friends and tell them how selfish and wrong they were. They just decided that they had to do this. It was their calling, it was their responsibility. The reaction they got from their friends and from their family members outside the home was surprising...or maybe not. Many friends felt judged, even though they weren't judged. Many friends cut off communication with them or wouldn't visit them in their new, smaller, and "dangerous" neighborhood home. Many family thought they were crazy and felt like they couldn't maintain a relationship with them.

I have not come to bring peace... I don't think Jesus is really saying he sets out to bring division in the same sense that we understand these thing in our secular world. I think he is saying that we are called by Him to follow Him, and that His path for us is different. Yes, it is divided from the path of 99.9% of the rest of the world. If we choose to follow that path, it does not make us special, it does not entitle us to anything above anyone else. All it means is that we have chosen a different way. We are not on the same road...we are on the road to follow Christ. Peace will come... It will be in our hearts. It will be a peaceful and satisfied mind. It will be a peaceful soul. Why peace in the midst of confusion and division? It will come because Christ shows us that what the world cares about the most, is the stuff that matters the least. Through Christ we will know true love. We will know honest relationships. We will know that the things of this world will continue to pass away, and that as long as we continue to seek satisfaction in them, we will be hungry and thirsty. We will know that when we drink of the true cup and eat the true bread, we will never again hunger, and never again thirst.

Where is my heart?

It is easy to be angry in this world. It is easy to think that what is going on is personally directed at me. It is easy for me to think that I am the center of my world. It is what I have been taught since birth. When I cried, my mommy came to me. When I complained, something changed. When I acted up, I was quickly disciplined. My world responds to me. Therefore, I must be the most important thing in it.

Then I sit quietly for a minute, and I realize that there are a lot of things going on in the world that happen irregardless of me. For a moment I catch a glimpse of how off base my natural thinking and assumed perspective must be. I, the center of my world? The politicos, musicians, customer service representatives, all waiting for my response, my engagement, my opinion, my blessing? It sounds so absurd, but it is exactly the natural state of mind for most of us. The world is reacting to me. The world is waiting for me. The world is designed to screw me. The world is designed to support me.


I even bring this paradigm to my perceptions of God. I filter my readings of the Bible, my beliefs about Christ and what salvation and liberation are to this. I elevate myself to the very center of my universe. But not only my universe. I actually must think that I am the center of my spirituality, as well as my physical world. How lonely a place this leaves me in.

Luke, 12:34 contains the statement from Jesus "Where your treasure is, there your heart be, also." Regardless of all the treasures of this life, I think the most corrupting, the most obvious, and most likely the one at the foundation of it all for us...is the treasure of thinking it is all about me, first and foremost. I can be the grandest fighter for human rights, the greatest general on the battlefield fighting for the cause of freedom, or the nastiest criminal, or the worst human being to walk the planet...and I can still be thinking that it is all about me. I can still be of the perspective that it is all centered around me... My treasure is me.


Now imagine a world where you and I are not the center of it. Where God actually created all these things and we are but a one little part of it. It was not exactly just created for your personal enjoyment. The experience you just had in the drive through at McDonalds was not just because of you and for you. The way you were treated was not just good because you are good, or bad because the world is out to screw you...because the world is composed of human beings just like you, created by God, just like you...who have husbands and kids and worries, and joys, and thoughts about life and death, just like you.

So there's really no difference between me and you and everyone else in this world. Irregardless of socio-economic condition, our race, our religion, or the country of our birth and residence, it doesn't matter...it doesn't make us any better or worse than anyone else. We are all children of God, we are all a part of the same family of God. We are all one. Even the divisions that we emphasize like legal/illegal, rich/poor, black/white/Hispanic /Jew/gentile/Arab/Shiite/Sunni...who cares? The true treasure that our heart should be longing for is a heart that loves everyone. I don't mean the feel good, gushy, mushy love that actually has no action that comes from it. I am talking about the good Samaritan, serving and loving one another with a love that could only come from God kind of Love. The kind of Love that we have to capitalize. The kind of Love that we can't even understand or really describe very well. The kind of Love that continues to amaze us and teach us as it extends us and forces us to do things for people in the name of the God that gives us that Love.

eating with the "unclean," drinking the real Koolaid

Peter was living on the edge in Acts 11. He was eating with the enemy...the gentiles. What a travesty. There are a lot of unclean folks here amongst us. The homeless, the poor, the minimum wagers, the drug addicts, alcoholics, undocumented, and unemployed. There are probably more to add to that list, but most of these groups are somehow alienated from our churches and our communities of faith. In many ways they are alienated from community in general and are forced to form their own. Then we fault them for having "bad" influences or not "mainstreaming" by having their own counter culture. But didn't we force them into that culture to begin with?

Peter was shown in a series of visions that there is no such thing as "unclean" when it comes to people. No one we should stay away from. No one who deserves to be on the outside. These definitions, these lines in the sand are human constructs of human kingdoms designed to hoard resources and protect power. These things get in the way of God's kingdom and His purposes. How can we love our neighbor if we can't reach him/her for our own possessions, our own fences, our own borders? What is getting in the way of this most basic and central command...to love one another as God loves us?

We have worked hard and continue to work hard to exclude and define one another. We like definitions and boundaries. In the health care debate is the haves versus the have nots. In commerce it is frequently the business owners versus the employees. In immigration it is the "illegals" versus the "legals." It Alabama's gubernatorial election it is the Spanish versus English. It is our way versus their way. The problem is there will always be an us and a them until we follow God's call to Love. Love doesn't enforce boundaries and differences...it breaks them down. Our worth is not in what we own or what others don't own. It's not in how much power "we" have and how much power "they" don't have. Our worth is only measured by how much God loves us...and he doesn't love any one of us any more than anyone else...or another way...he loves us so much, that any distinction just doesn't matter.

So how do we know what we love and what we are actually worshiping? How do we know if we have "drunk the Koolaid of this world's message, or bought the true message of faith of our God?" From Revelation 21: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life."

Drinking from the water of this world is like drinking from a mirage, because that's all it is. The water of this world is the stuff we are taught is important from birth to death by the institutions of this world...not God. We learn from the earliest age that we are supposed to please everyone. Please our parents, please our teachers, live up to standards that we aren't supposed to question. We aren't supposed to question, just to obey and live up to someone else's standards. Where the hell did these standards come from? Not from love...not from God! We have to throw all that crap to the wind because it's not real. Approval from others isn't worth anything. We have to follow the path of love, build the real kingdom of love...nothing more...nothing less. The real water that quenches our thirst isn't worldly...it's heavenly. It's real life...real living to live a life of Love...called by God...called by Christ to live a life like Him. It is a life of asking, seeking, searching and loving...but it is not a life that checks in with everyone else before stepping out in faith and adventure.

We have to throw out our politics and replace it with the politics of Love. We have to throw out our economics and replace it with an economic system based on loving God and loving one another. We have to throw out all our selfish motives and rules in our relationships and adopt only the rule of Love.

It's not about what we put first. It's not even about priorities. It's about context and perspective. Ours has to change. If we have priorities, then we put something first, then move onto something else second, etc... That kind of hierarchy doesn't fit in when we talk about the Kingdom of God. You don't put the Kingdom on a priority list. You don't put love on a priority list. Love is not Job 1...it is the ONLY job, the only priority on the list, it is an either/or. That's what Jesus was saying when he said you can't serve two masters. We only have an either/or choice. We choose to serve Him...to serve the embodiment of Love...follow the path of Love in every case, in every part of our lives...or we choose to follow something else. No priorities...just a choice...a life long choice that has eternal and forever implications for you, for your family, for your money, your politics, your religion, for everything. If what you think you have done up until now doesn't have that kind of far reaching effect, then you haven't realized that you are only giving lip service to the idea of following a path of Love, the path of God. This choice is pervasive. This choice is eternal. This choice is fundamental.

That's why some of us have to completely start over. A house built on the wrong foundation won't stand. No matter what you do to it, unless you rebuild the foundation, you cannot strengthen the house. It will fall. That's why it's not a sad thing to tear down everything and start over. Like a surgeon going in and cutting you open...it's going to hurt, there will be pain...but there is life in that pain...there is love in all that temporary destruction...there is healing in those hands that wield such a seemingly dangerous instrument. Let God cut away, dissect us, strip us down, and build us back up the right way. Let us lay down our lives and yield to His hand. That is the only way we will truly live.